


Queen of the water

by Toothless



Series: coil my tongue [2]
Category: Justified
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Always a Girl!Raylan, BAMF Women, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, Mentions of Non-explicit Non-con, Rape Aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-31
Updated: 2014-01-31
Packaged: 2018-01-10 16:37:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1162030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toothless/pseuds/Toothless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Raylan is seventeen she meets Mags Bennett and almost dies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Queen of the water

i.

After, Helen makes her put on her best dress, cotton-silk and pale as moonlight. Makes her sit in front of Frances’ old vanity, hands folded in her lap, clasped like in prayer, like benediction. Helen combs her hair, braids it into one long, heavy rope over her shoulder and lets wisps of smooth curls frame her cheeks.

Makes her look all of fourteen again, young and soft and like she she couldn’t tell a shotgun from a hunting rifle if her life depended on it. Like she’s never held a weapon in her hand with the intent to kill a man. Like she never touched the firm handle a knife and felt quiet, warm elation at the gentle weight of it.

Helen makes her look like a child when she is anything but.

 

ii.

The last thing she remembers is the sickly sweet ache of cherry cola and the soothing burn of ‘shine at the back of her throat. She remembers the dark velvety sky and the stars like pinpricks of fire. The world moving slow as molasses, tipping on its axis and smearing at the corners, blurred like smudges of a handprint, the perfect indention of a thumb.

The last thing she remembers is his hand on her hip, and the strong, clear smell of spearmint gum.

 

She wakes with her panties lost somewhere on the floor and the sun scalding her skin. Her thighs are sticky and the realization of that makes something give a startled and cold thump inside her chest. An arctic continent spreading out, unfolding ice-blue wings across her heart.

To this day, Raylan doesn’t remember getting up or getting dressed. Doesn’t remember pulling her jeans up over her naked hips because she couldn’t find her underwear. Doesn’t remember her hands trembling when she buttoned her shirt and tried smoothing out the tangles of her hair. Raylan doesn’t remember walking down the hallway, padding softly on carpet, to the end of the hall and she doesn’t remember curling her hand around the soft, worn handle of Bobby Joe’s baseball bat.

 

This is what Raylan Givens remembers:

The strong, cool aftertaste of spearmint gum coating the inside of her mouth.

The sound of Dickie Bennett’s fibia breaking clean off.

 

iii.

Mags Bennett isn’t smiling when Raylan meets her for the first time.

Dolled up and smoothed out in a way she’s never bothered to try and be, Helen had told her, fingers clenching on her bare shoulders, in anger, in fear, had told her _You go in there and you bat your lashes at them and you curtsey if you need and you don’t look a second like you know violence or anger or vengeance in your heart, ya hear me?_

Raylan had thought then that it would be Bennett Senior that she needed to appease, or a Bennett brother or male cousin who would carry hatred in their souls for her, because she’d broken one of theirs.

She is only partially right.

 

The Bennett-Givens grudge is as old as Harlan county, as old as the dusty rocks and tumbling creaks that makes up the world under her feet, and she has shaken it. Lit a fuse to kindling fire, poured gasoline on a weak-willed flame.

And she understands Helen then, when she tip-toes into the living room, the smell of tobacco greeting her, as familiar as any scent in Harlan, and she is surrounded by bearded men. Men who look like her father, men with the mountain under their fingernails, like a shadow imprinted and wear the hardships of life like badges of honor on their faces.

Because she looks weak like this, dressed in white like a virgin, soft in a way that she isn’t and never will be, and they won’t hurt her like this. She can see that suddenly. It is a strange revelation to behold, to shed one’s armor only to be better dressed for battle in the nakedness of one’s flesh. The paradox of wielding her femininity as a shield, as a sword, when she’s spent her entire life rejecting it. Seen it as a stone mill around her neck, seen it as Frances’ weakness, passed on to her through blood and shared like a penchant for drink, like a disease, inherited from mother to daughter for eons.

But here, now, in front of the Bennetts like she’s facing her maker (and in a way she is) femininity is her veil to wrap around herself, flimsy like gossamer silk, but there, none the less, to protect her.

It is the first time Raylan understands the strength of it, the way fragility can be only another garb for power.

So she tilts her head, bows like she’s contrite, devastated by the violence, remorseful. Like, perhaps, Dickie remembers wrongly, maybe she never hit him with a bat, never intended to beat him senseless, maim him until there would be nothing left to scrub from the carpet. Like it hadn’t taken Bobby Joe and Travis and fucking Johnny Crowder to hold her back from splitting Dickie’s head just as surely as she did his leg.

  
In the end, of course, it is not the men she needs to worry about.

 

iv.

Mags catches up with her along the dirt road on her way home. Though that isn’t really right, Mags waits until Raylan is along side her on the road and then joins her walking.

Raylan has seen Mags Bennett before. As a child, running between her legs at church, at the school science fair, at the shop buying groceries. One of the many anonymous grown-ups who painted the scenes of the background of her childhood. She wasn’t Arlo, who would cuff her on the head if she misbehaved, or Bo Crowder, who’d ignored her as a child and then, when she grew taller and rounder, when her breasts became something more than mosquito bites under sweaty, white t-shirts, started to look at her with satisfaction, with the hunger of a man who imagines himself entitled, and she’s been forced to pay attention, to be vigilant of him as well. No, Mags Bennett was the sort of faceless, shapeless blur that adults usually are to children who don’t fear them.

Raylan will not make this mistake again.

 

In the sense of the word, this is the first time Raylan meets Mags, the person. Mags doesn’t offer a smile, though her eyes crinkle as if amused, and she links her arm with Raylan’s, without asking, as if it is the natural order of things, to walk arm in arm with the woman who crippled her son.

Raylan can’t bring herself to ask, or move her arm away, because she’s still shell-shocked with relief, that she could walk out of the Bennett house with both legs under her and nothing but the sun hanging over her.

Nothing is that easy, of course.

 

They don’t talk because Mags doesn’t have to, she has no need for theatrics, Raylan is a woman after all.

Mags only leads her, and Raylan follows, docile as a lamb to slaughter and they venture off the path, turn into the woods that leak from the base of the mountain. Mags is soft and warm next to her, a counterpoint to anything that can truly be said for Mags, anything that can be discerned in her eyes.

And they happen upon a shallow dug-out, and Raylan gets to see her first corpse.

 

When she’s finished retching (she hadn’t eaten enough for it to be anything but bile and water), with Mags surprisingly gentle hands on her back, stroking skin and soft cotton dress, mumbling reassurances that sound too loving to be anything but the most sincere act, Raylan can hardly breathe.

Mags holds her braid away from her face, tilts her head to the side and smoothes away vomit from her chin, maternal and sweet, and grips her hard.

“We will never see each other like this again,” she says softly, chiddingly almost. Raylan can feel her pulse beneath her own skin, rapid like it wants to jump ship, beat her ribcage in two.

But Raylan only nods, shakily, and Mags Bennett, for the first time, smiles at her.

“Good girl.”

And then she turn and leaves through the foliage, as silently as ghost.

 


End file.
